Trials of Richard Seaton
by LynchingVerse
Summary: Richard Seaton runs across an alien hive mind by the name of Phyrexia as one of his first tasks as a member of the Knights of the Dark Tower. A Skylark of Space/Magic the Gathering crossover. Originally by Cracklord and Colesign
1. Chapter 1

Where are these words coming from? What do they mean, how do they arrive in your head, and who is sending them? To what purpose? You don't know. Part of you doesn't want to know. But your ship, the Skylark is coming alive, though what it will become, you don't know. All you know for sure, is that you're not the captain anymore. You're a part of the organism, but not the brain, nor even the heart. You're just what keeps the thing healthy, making repairs and other minor alterations, though the majority of them are being taken care of by the ship itself. The closest you can come is the antibodies in a biological beings bloodstream, rather then whatever this is.

**"All hail Lord Yawgmoth, the Ineffible! Father of Machines!"** You whisper, as the door slides open with a faintly organic sound. **"It is He who opened my mind, and it is He who healed me, of sickness, of pain, and of mortality. And it is He who shall lead us across the Multiverse to the heavens, as Gods!"**

You don't know who it is you are praying to. Or how you understand the language, or even how your throat forms the alien sounds. It's better that way. But whatever it is, it's already got a hold on you that you fear you'll never break. You haven't slept in days, because when you do your body keeps on moving on it's own, and you wake up to find it taking apart the life-support or any of a thousand other incomprehensible tasks, all of which add up to something you don't understand.  
>But you will. Evolution is at work here, and you are part of something the scientist within you can barely wait to see. And the rest, what people would call a soul? That doesn't have a say anymore.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

Astral projection was more scientific then magical. It was simply transferring your life-force and senses to another location distinct from your body. Naturally, it was difficult to quantify, but it was certainly possible.

Which is why the visions he had received, half remembered glimpses of things better forgotten, visions of that which was to come, that he no longer fought against. How could he? He was part of it now. He had evolved, moved beyond the constraints of flesh and humanity into the sea of untapped potential that lay beyond, unconstrained by self-imposed limitations.

Already, he had found himself improving the Skylark in ways he couldn't believe had never occurred to him before. He'd given the ship life, and sentience, and purpose, and it was only the beginning. But the rest would come in time. For now, he needed communion. As he settled down and closed his eyes, he felt himself leave his body, and rapture pumped through him. He was to be rewarded again.

Seaton awoke in a vast, stadium like space. Except his body was still sleeping. No, while he slept aboard the Skylark his dreams had taken him across a great sea of shard and bone and rust. Paradise.  
>It was only a word, a Platonic ideal. Yet even as something deep within him screamed and wept in terror, his mind told him that this was it, the sum of all his dreams, his insights and inspirations he had placed upon the alter of science. This was progress in it's highest, purest form. He had turned to science to help people, not this, but somehow he could not force himself to remember that. Looking up, he could see hanging devices surrounded the blue light on the ceiling of the vast chamber. Most of the objects were so far removed from anything he had ever seen that the intended use of them was an utter mystery, their purpose far beyond him. But none of them looked benign.<p>

Each one was like a work of art—like the art of Hell itself. The curves, edges, sweep and flow of each one held a particular horror that stabbed deep and twisted without touching them. The slick textures, pointed tips and gleaming edges seemed to probe and cut from a distance. The objects had common elements of shape and color that suggested a profound malevolence, but they were not entirely lacking in their own grotesque beauty. Some seemed as marvels of engineering with parts that moved in complex ways like puzzling anatomic structures from some fantastic organism.

And across them scuttled lifeforms, human sized yet seeming no larger then insects on the vast machinery. Tentatively the things moved, like awkward puppets on strings. Instead of feet, the things had another pair of hands at the ends of their legs. And the sound those fingers made on against the surfaces was curiously soft. The proportions of their metallic bodies were slim, feminine. Limbs held cracks in the joints where they were articulated for movement. Parts of their limbs were translucent, revealing the play of arteries and conduits from which ran pink fluids. From their torsos protruded segmented tendrils, gears, pincers and clawed hands. And they had no faces, or even heads, instead massive plates of ceramics like down-swept blades.

He should find them horrific, terrifying, a perversion of like itself, much less the human form. Instead, he exalted, as though he had been allowed to catch a glimpse of the almighty, and his body felt the tingling flush that came with the beginnings of arousal. And the screaming voice that was all that was left of Richard Seaton wondered what scared him more, what had become of them, or what was becoming of him, while his body only stared, lips moving soundlessly.

He breathed, and the air tasted of ash. Then he stood and began to walk mechanically, slowly passing through the great space and making his way towards some unknown destination, the servants moving aside to let him pass, their eyeless faces watching him with uncanny focus as they stopped their labors.  
>The hallway brought to mind a museum corridor several hundred feet long. At equal intervals enormous pilasters, decorated in a baroque style, supported the ceiling. Each pilaster featured a grotesque face of greenish black and chrome, yards across, its stylized mouth open in a silent roar of rage. In the distant recesses of the arched ceiling, unseen mechanisms clicked and whirred. As he passed one, from it's mouth came breath redolent with both the stench of rotten meat and overheated electrical components. If they were just robots, why did they breathe? He shuddered, his new mind in ecstasy, his old one in horror.<p>

Seaton passed through a cavernous chamber, pausing to see the wonders within, and saw what seemed to be a library, where small flaming symbols and dazzling, vibrant words hovered in the space of each shelf like glistening banners. Each volume was enormous in size, and seemed to be plated in ribbed metal. When he heard a dull roar, he turned and saw a river of black water running down the aisles. Knowledge. Answers to questions he wasn't ready to ask. When he had completed his pilgrimage, he would beg the right to remain in there and be enlightened to the nature of perfection. But first he had a destination to reach.

Beyond that library, was a larger still chamber where titanic, half-glimpsed machines were at work on monumental structures of such odd design that purpose and function could not even be guessed, and then onto more identical corridors. Deep in his ponderous, mesmerized mind was a tiny spark, but it died quickly, he had been dominated to the point that even the scientist within him was subdued beneath the single-minded worship of a concept he didn't understand. Yet. Though the nature of the beast was beginning to reveal itself.

In another chamber he saw ranks of what looked like uniformed laborers, hunched over typewriters or word processors, furiously typing. Their arms were so long were they to stand they would scrape the ground, and their hunched forms were clad in brown robes, hiding their appearance, as their withered hands dancing blindly over the panels. Segmented cables protruded from their foreheads and networked them together, just like computers that could perform more effectively when linked, allowing for the parallel processing of information. One of them looked up and Seaton saw that its skull was deformed, and that reddish sensors filled its eye sockets, but it had once been a man, or at least something very, very like one. Turning from this new aberration, he noticed that above them hung a massive book laid upon an altar-like structure at the back of the room. The book was open, and across its pages were prism-like images, flickering across them like projected images. He thought he saw shapes that resembled the double helix of the DNA molecule, binary code or even letters that resembled the Greek alphabet.

A figure met him then, waiting in the long corridor, and in his own way he was as unsettling as all the abominations Seaton had passed, his steps mechanical, as he murmured to himself and twitched sporadically. They'd been so moulded and perverted they weren't even remotely human anymore, even in resemblance, yet this person looked like anyone you saw on the street. He was smiling hatefully, dressed in a long black robe, a hood shadowing his face, and there were no lines on the palms of his hands.

He did not belong here, among perfection. He was a blot, a cancer, as out of place as a living man. As he himself was. And yet he found himself drawn to him, desperate to hear his words. Somehow, he knew they will help him understand his purpose, fulfill the need that has become the entirety of his identity.

"We've never met, so please allow me to introduce myself. You can call me whatever you think fits, though I'm partial to Randall Flagg myself." He says smiling, and waved Seaton over. "Like what you've seen? I hope so, because we're going to use it as a template. Before you know it, most of the worlds will be just like it."

"Hail Discordia." Seaton's mouth said, though he'd never heard the words before, anymore then he'd heard the babbled prayers he sometimes found himself saying. Flagg, if that's who he was, nodded, smiling in a slightly indulgent manner.

"Exactly right. This is Phyrexia, a place where demons are of flesh and metal, and all the sins have been purged away, where the screams of angels used to echo before they were remade in the image of it's amster, where death has never set foot, and where all is one. Problem is, they're all trapped here. No way out, unless someone opens the door for them, and that's not easy. A cracks all that can be managed, it's sealed up that tight. And even if it was, that's too slow. Spreading a world at a time, integration, who has time for all that? Then again, you might say time is the one thing they do have. Ten thousand years trapped in here, before I found them. Welcome to the universes' biggest prison. I'm the parole officer."  
>He turned and faced Seaton squarely. "But it can still spread. Oh yes. The oil's in you now. Growing and expanding, branching out every way it can. Pumping, pumping, and singing sweet blasphemies using your brain to do it. I bet you can hear it. And you'll help it spread. Just a bit longer, and every world you touch will be as infected as you are."<p>

He reaches into his robes, and removes a bell and sign saying 'Unclean', of the sort lepers wore in the Middle-Ages, and hangs them around Seaton's neck. They hang there with a leaden weight, and yet he can't seem to find the strength or desire to remove them. The thing that he's becoming has no time for trivialities like that. "Now quieten up, we're getting to the good part. And sorry about the whiff of brimstone. Can't seem to get it off my clothes."

It was then he finally came to the end of the corridor, and looked up. It was a spire, thousands of feet high and hundreds of feet in diameter, larger than any tower he had ever seen or imagined.  
>The tower was a dark, swirled red stone. From its base arose a series of suspended, elliptical halos of red crystal each as delicate and perfect as a snowflake with thorn-like windows jutting gently here and there. Those five halos, resembling stupendous disks of flame that spiraled upwards, became smaller as they reached the vertically supported capstone. And atop the capstone was another sun. Like all suns, it was a chained hell. A star blazing bright next to the other, larger sun that angled strangely in the sky.<p>

"Impressive, huh?" A figure said, his tone light and conversant, though it didn't suit him in the least.

"He knows his stuff, that's for sure. You can't see them from this angle, but it's only one of four."  
>Seaton continued to stare even as the light burned his eyes, unable to take his gaze away. A sun, chained for nothing more then to serve as a torch. It beggared belief. He tore his eyes away, now so burned they were barely functioning, then asked, dreading the answer. "And if a sun is atop the spire, what is on the roof of this place?"<p>

In response, Flagg turned and met his gaze squarely "I'm glad you asked me that. Why, on the roof, that is six hundred tiers above us, there is a throne. And that's where you're going."

Then he was falling, falling, and when he woke up he was in cold sweat, naked on his bed, deep in a pool of black oil that was slightly obscenely organic to touch, like long rotted fruit. There was so much of it. It had been just a drop, and had become all this, expanded into all this in him, then been expelled by some miracle he didn't understand. But that was a mystery that could wait. The Skylark was too corrupted, the mycosynth spores were everywhere, the ship was alive with malign purpose. It would have to be brought down, destroyed completely, before the contagion spread. And then there was the dreams. He knew who had done this to him, and he knew why.

He knew what he had to do.


	3. Chapter 3

In the Centaurus Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, nestled within a Nebulae of shimmering stardust, within the clusters of the seventeen emerald stars of the Green System, on the Planet Normalon, Dorothy Seaton and Richard Jr. were building a starship so that they could search for their mutual husband and father.

Normalon! A gentle planet, one that bore the marks of a triumphant Civilization, of evolved beings dedicated completely to the the ideals of Scientific Pursuit and peaceful meditation. Where each adult was the complete master of a field of science, knowledge imbued within them by cunning systems of education and the instant electronic imprinting of the total knowledge of their ancestors upon maturity. From the cradle to the grave, the Normalonians lived rationally calculated and quantifiably fulfilling lives.

And at some point, they had slipped into stagnation, and misplaced that spark, that drive which propels the younger more reckless races outward from their home...and leads to wonder and Sheer Astonishment!

When Richard Seaton unified the four species of the Green System, the warlike Kondals and Urvanians, the Porpoise-Men of Dasor and academic Normalonians...it was the best thing that had happened to those dusty elders of a gentle race for eons. They were faced with challenges once more, in new scientific paradigms, in mitigating the savagery of their planetary cousins, and in defending the universe from a thousand would-be galactic empires.

Thus the Normalonians were more than happy to help Dorothy build a packet-style spaceship to help search for her husband.

Dorothy stood on a balcony and watched as it took shape in the launch cradle, a thin spire of gleaming purple-transparent monopolium and programmable matter.

She had written out the designs on classic foolscap, the contents of which lay scattered at her feet. The 'Starling' was designed with three things in mind: Engine power, defensive fields, and an enhanced sensor array, able to pick out a ship's energy signature from the core of a galaxy and project hard-light constructs across lightyears, able to take hits and run fast.

_It's the same old story for a wife._ Dorothy thinks. _First you worry that your husband's a workaholic–which, to be fair, is something Seaton has a lot of trouble with–then you worry that he's abandoned you–which I couldn't help but imagine even though I know him really well–and then..._

_And then you worry that something's gone horribly wrong, and you call the police._

_Except that there aren't any police out there who can track your Scientific Adventurer husband across the entirety of the known Cosmos._

_...Dammit._

"Mom! Mom!"

Dorothy turned about to see Richard Jr. waft up the nearby repeller tube, dressed in swim trunks, soaking wet...and carrying a Normalonian green-skinned, subtly large-brained youth, whose left arm was dangling limply.

"Richard, what happened!" Dorothy asked, rushing over to her son's side.

"I..." Richard Jr. averted his eyes for a moment. "It was an accident. Dacel and Foros and Theti and I were playing in the distilled water pool...and I was playing with Dacel and...I hurt him by mistake."

Richard Jr. stared at the ground, looking at the gleaming brass vambraces fixed around his slender arms, the 6th Order Inhibitors that his father had quickly thrown together before blasting off for Earth to 'Put things in Order'.

It was only because of those two small pieces of apparel that Richard Jr. was able to grow and get along like a normal boy, filling out in size and gaining a bit more of his Father's features in a heart-aching fashion. But there were only a stopgap measure, a temporary measure for until Richard Seaton returned to fully cure his son of his...contagion.

Dorothy could still remember her utter helplessness at that time...snatched by tattooed commandos from her cheap flat in a strange, vulgar, bleak, and hostile future...being beaten and humiliated, and brought in chains to the temple of Chichen Itza and the Court of the Red Queen , a cold, evil, black-eyed cobra whose capered amongst a menagerie of insane bat monsters.

She remembered Seaton's Projection materializing, the tears in his eyes, struggling to keep it together as that bitch put a bayonet to her son's throat...the steely glint in his eyes as he began to put together a plan to safe them...and then the horror as his Projection was disrupted by the electronic war field of the Invading Britannians...as everything fell into chaos...and as a vampire guard, overcome by bloodlust, sank his teeth into her son's shoulder...

"Mom? Mom? Do you know where we can find a medkit? I...I want to make up for my screwup...by fixing Daxel's arm...can I do that for you, Daxel? I mean, if Mom lets me?"

"It's okay." the green skinned youth said, smiling: "I know it was an accident: you're a Heavy Worlder, and you're used to things being more durable: I've blocked out the pain with a mental technique I designed at age twenty, and with proper treatment, the fracture could heal fully. Besides...you don't know medicine: the First of Healing should take care of it."

"I know." Richard Junior said glumly, rubbing his face. "But...I need to help somehow. I need to do something good to make up for the bad. That's what good guys do!"

"Like your dad?" Daxel asks.

Richard Jr. frowned. "I guess."

"How about this, okay?" Dorothy says, kneeling down so that she matched the heights of both her son and the Normalonian kid. "Go the the First of Healing with Daxel, but then ask the First if you can help him tend to Daxel's arm: I'm sure he'll have something he could use your help with."

"Cool!" Richard Jr. and Daxel said simultaneously. With the rapid shifting of focus that's endemic to youth, they swiveled about and walked off towards one of the nearby hovercars, chattering about learning medicine, and talking excitedly about the rocket-ship taking shape far off in the launch cradle.

"I'm gonna be the Navigator! I'll plot courses and scan for stuff and everything!" Dorothy heard her son say.

"That's so scientific! Are you going to travel to Earth?"

"...Nah. Earth sucks." 


	4. Chapter 4

The space-forsaken irony of if all was that the _Starling's_ voyage ended only minutes after it began.

As Dorothy, Richard Jr., and a platoon of Kondalian Commandos blasted off in the slender craft, the sheer force generated from the disintegrating force of multiple uranium bars driving them out of the Green System at a speed compared to which the speed of light was but a snail's pace...

...their long range projections picked up the drive signatures of a spaceship. A large spaceship, a spaceship the size of a moon, lurking just outside the range of the planetary mass detectors of the Green System, in a parking orbit around a black hole and star double system, thick streams of plasma peeling off from the doomed sun and plummeting into that abyssal singularity of absolute negation.

_The Skylark of Valeron!_ Dorothy thought. _What caused Richard to pull that old bird out of hiding? Another alien menace? Have some Cloran remnants popped out of the woodwork? Or maybe it's the Pure Intellectuals! God, those ascended manchildren are so annoying..._

_...Why hasn't he contacted us? Is he hiding from us?_

_...blisters, don't let your worries keep you from acting!_

"Set us on an Intercept Course." She said, staring at the visiplate projections and biting her lip. "Don't spare the power plants."

***

It was indeed the _Skylark of Valeron_, somehow dragged from it's hiding place in the Orion Nebulae and set in an orbit, a mass of machinery and power reactors and exciters and 6th Order Projectors, a moon-sized behemoth designed to blast it's way back from the far end of the universe and to imprison Ascended Beings, all it's functions guided by an Electronic Brain just barely below the threshold of intelligence, designed to work in tandem with it's pilot.

Matter and energy were merely building blocks to the mind that controlled it, all conjurable simply through the application of imagination and willpower, and limited only by one's power sources. And with several asteroid sized reactors burning huge blocks of uranium, and a Cosmic Energy Convertor that absorbed the energy of Cosmic Rays, the _Valeron_ was not spoilt for power.

Dorothy looked at the dials at the control deck, frowning as she sorted through the alien measurements systems in her head.

_That can't be right._

"Rovol." She asked, waving the young radiation technician over. "Do these reading mean what I think they mean?"

The newly instated First of Radiation scratched his head.

"This is quite curious...no, most curious indeed! The instruments are without error: the _Valeron_ is currently drawing upon enormous amounts of energy!"

"And yet she's not moving." Dorothy said quietly. "He could be driving a Projection across a large amount of space..."

"There's no sign of any emanations from the Higher bands of Energy, thought." Rovol remarked, scratching his large skull, eyes gleaming at the scientific mystery before him.

Dorothy forced her voice to remain calm. "And it's doesn't explain why he hasn't contacted us. _Why he hasn't bothered to inform us why he's alive._

"Raise communications." She said crisply.

She grabbed a microphone, it's wire connection snaking out from the nearby console.

"Richard. Richard Seaton. Are you there?"

Silence on the end.

"Richard...dammit ****, if you're there please answer me! This is Dorothy!"

Silence. The _Valeron_ made no attempt to shift it's position, nor did the power readings coming from it change in any way.

"****...talk to me if your there. If you don't respond...I'm going to do something really, really stupid, you lug."

Silence. Then on the Etherwave receiver, a scratchy, hoarse voice rang out:

"...Dottie?" Richard said softly. "Dottie...what are you doing here? ...how did you find me, for that matter?"

"I looked. With this spaceship I built. _It wasn't hard._" Dorothy said beneath clenched teeth. The two contradictory emotions of knee-quivering relief, and lip quivering anger built up within her chest, and she finally gave vent to both there emotions at once.

"What in Sam Hill, have you been doing, Richard? And why the hell haven't you contacted us! I was near sick with worry and fit to go into a screeching fit, you've been gone so long! And Richard Jr! Leaving him to deal with his...condition on his own!"

She struggled to rein in her ire.

"...I'm willing to listen. But you better hope that your explanation for you complete and utter absence from our lives is a good one: what is it? Galactic Invasion? Trapped in a pocket dimension? Time travel? Space Brambles?"

"..."

"I was going to come back as soon as..." Richard's voice trailed off.

Dorothy blinked once. She rubbed her face, and then...

"I'm coming over: open the docking seals."

"Dottie, no! It's not safe!"

Dorothy paused, then thought things through, and smiled a bit. "Whatever's wrong, it's something that you want to save my feelings from, the man keeping his secret from his wife to avoid damaging her constitution–you know, that schtick was old back in the _1920s_."

"But whatever's going on," She continued, "It's obviously not _too_ dangerous at the moment, or you'd be straightforward about it, and not all dancing around the topic. So here's how it is: let me in, or I'll blast my way in. Your ship's big enough: it can take it."

Dorothy paused, expecting a heated retort, or a precise scientific explanation of how the capabilities of the _Valeron_ far exceeded that of her personal spacecraft.

"...Please don't come in." Richard said in a dull tone of voice. At the same time, lights lit up on the surface of the _Skylark of Valeron_, and the multiple docking doors slid open, huge pieces of machinery pushing aside plates of pure Isonon alloy, allowing the _Starling_ to fly right in.

Dorothy felt a sinking feeling in her stomach.

When Richard Seaton folded on an argument _that_ quickly...you knew something was wrong.

"Rovol." He said quietly. "Take Richard Junior to the Reactor hub and show him around. I need to speak with my husband alone first: I don't want anything to go wrong"

Rovol bowed. "If it be Graven Upon the Sphere, ma'am, it shall be done."

The First of Radiation left the command deck.

Dorothy groaned to herself quietly.

Then she straightened her head, stiffened her spine, and depressed several plungers and switches arranged in a fashion similar to the apparati of a Pipe Organ.

And the small, needle-like spaceship drifted in the the _Skylark of Valeron_'s main docking bay.


	5. Chapter 5

The bridge of the Skylark of Valeron was a lovely little two story colonial house.

But of course, that was the point. At the core of that moon-sized battleship, it's complete mastery over the 6th Order Forces allowed anyone of sufficient scientific knowledge, will, and imagination to rewrite reality: matter and energy could be summoned up at will...and in the case of the bridge of Richard Seaton's greatest creation, he chose to recreate his countryside home, white painted, freshly shingled, with an eternal fresh spring breeze blowing from the west, and an eternal sunny day shinning down from above.

Or at least, that was how it used to be.

Not a large piece of machinery that reminded Dorothy Vaneman-Seaton of nothing less that a giant observatory telescope turned the wrong way around poked down from the false heavens like God's finger, occupying the entire dome area and poking through the shingled roof of the two-story house, rubble and splinters of wood scattered across the yard where the giant device had presumably been ramned right through the roof.

Dorothy inhaled sharply.

_What is going on? Think, you molly-coddled excuse for a heiress. Use some of that Super-Science you've picked up. It's some kinds of scanner...in fact, I think I recognize a neutronium Lens as part of it's workings. So it can analyze all type of energy and matter ranging up to the 5th Order of Radiation...and perhaps beyond. But what would it be scanning?_

_...I really hope this isn't some kind of trap. That would take the cake._

Dorothy pulled out an automatic pistol from one of her pocket, chambered a round. The rounds were purely ordinary jacketed lead: using an X-plosive bullet in such tight quarters would be a ticket to suicide.

She held the gun's barrel down at her side.

And then she walked up to the front porch, sidestepping a shattered wooden beam, and pushed open the door.

The main hallway was filled with sawdust and shattered glass. Dorothy stepped over the glass and followed the rubble right into the living area.

And there she found her husband, slumped in a chair, clothes so ragged that the sum total of their remaining fabric area wouldn't make up a thin jacket, hair tousled and shaggy, bathed in pale blue light as some of the most advanced machinery in existence whirred and whinned right over his head, the very tip of the scanner Dorothy had seen outside pointing right at her husband.

"**Full Order Spectrum Scan Completed."** The Brain of the ship concluded in a level, polite tone, it's voice emanating from nowhere. "**No prescence of Contanimation detected. Results conclusive to the degree of 99.91 % assured accuracy."  
><strong>

"Run it again." Seaton rasped.

Dorothy stayed in the shadows, listening.

"**Sir, we have run this test 987 times, and all these tests have been negative. The total possibility of testing error is now only .09%."**

"That's not enough." Seaton said flatly, rubbing his face. "Keeping running the Scan until the possbility of error is at a nice, big, fat 0. You got that?"

"**Sir, as I have stated earlier, achieving 100% accuracy is impossible–"**

"_Damn the ****ing impossible_!" Seaton roared suddenly, surging to his feet. "I violated Relativity when I was twenty-five by accident! I've journeyed to the far end of the universe and back, beat down Gods, blown countless invincible star fleets out of the Ether! I've forged machine parts in the heart of a star, and unraveled the mysteries of the 4th Dimension! So why can't I tack a couple more decimals onto that 99.91 percent of yours! Do you _know_ what could happen if you are wrong? Do you–"

Seaton slumped down into his chair, and picked up a headset from the ground at his feet, placing it over his head.

"We'll convert the analyzer of the Full-Spectrum Scanner into a dual-based Quantum Computing unit. That should increase the accuracy a bit more."

"**Affirmative. Sir, I think I should remind you that you have not eaten in–"**

"I'll materialize the ATP right into my cells." Seaton replied. "Now let's do this."

Dorothy's mouth thinned into a tight line. Then she took several quiet steps back around the corner, and pitching her voice, called out:

"Richard! Richard, where are you?"

Dorothy heard a loud thump and clatter from around the corner, then a:

"It's okay! I'm right here! Hold on a second..."

Dorothy walked around the corner and into the living room. She saw Richard place the headset on a nearby table and frantically comb his hair into place.

In a matter of several seconds, Richard had used his spaceship's 6th Order Tech to shave his stubble, clean his hair, and restore his wardrobe to a clean-lined leather jacket, jeans, and a Hawaian T-Shirt.

He tried to smile. Dorothy could tell it was meant to be a gentle, reassuring smile.

And he failed horribly at it. It took all of Dorothy Vaneman Seaton's formidable grit to down break down herself as her mind imagined all the foul things that could have affected her husband to this extent.

But she kept herself composed.

"Richard." She said quietly." Please tell me what happened.

Richard's travesty of a smile, faded, leaving a hollow-eyed, grey expression.

"I..." He walked over to a nearby couch, brushed the shattered glass off, and sat down.

"Dorothy, I know I was away for far too long...my God, is Richie alright? Is he..."

"He's fine." Dorothy hastily confirmed. "Normalon was the best possible place for him, especially after Earth. He's...so like you. And those armbands of yours have been working just fine."

The incident...she decided not to mention.

Richard let out a huff, and his shoulders straightened. "Thank God. I'm...glad to hear that. Dottie..."

He looked up at Dorothy.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't able to see you two...but believe me: it was truly, deeply, utterly for the best that I didn't come back until now."

He inhaled and pressed his hands together with such a violent paroxysm of force that Dorothy could have sworn she heard bones grinding.

Then he exhaled and began to explain.

"I was roving beyond the Magellnics in the Skylark III, examining a piece of derelict machinery I'd found...a strange, non linear design...and I inadvertantly exposed myself to a...a strange contaminent."

Richard's voice grew more level and measured as he went on.

"It had the consistency of engine grease. So I thought nothing of it...I...if I'd been more cautious, worn a pressure suit...in retrospect, it was a rather strange infectious agent, with characteristics similar to certain viruses and certain strains of Molecular Technology...but also some...mystical aspects to it, thought I hesitate to use that most unscientific term. Very very slowly, to the extent that my mind didn't pick it up, this agent began subverted my mental processes at the neurological level, subconciously influencing my engineering projects, which gradually aqquired a bizzare technological paradigm. By the time I noticed that something was wrong...the subverted portions of my mind were dictating the actions of my body, and even with my mental training and the support of those sub-personalities that remained unaffected, I was unable to orchestrate an effective resistance. Say Dottie, could you materialize some tea? Just like Shiro made it?"

Quietlym Dorothy put on a nearby headset and thought. Two steaming mugs materialized, one in her hand and the other in Richard's hand. Dorothy sat down next to Richard, who flinched for a moment, then covered for it by sipping his tea and grunting in appreciation

"This contaminent was a threat unlike anything I've encountered before. A aggressive mental and technological paradigm that spreads like a virus, subverting technology and civilizations. If it had gained control over my 5th or 6th Order Technology...the consequences would be too horrible to think about."

Dorothy nodded slowly. "So how did you beat it?"

Dorothy would later come to regret that innocuous question.

Her spouse had overcome so many threats in his span of existence, and she had grown so used to him pulling technological miracles out of his hat to save the day.

Richard closed his eyes. "I didn't. Some outside, unknown force intervened and caused my body to reject the contaniment. I recovered onboard the Skylark III, which had been...altered. Thankfully the ol Number 2 was unaffected. I took it out, and used the Attractors to dispose of the Skylark III in a black hole. Then I redevoused with the _Valeron_, and...well, here I am."

His voice quavered a bit.

"I wanted to go back. But I had to make sure I was...was uncontaminated. It wouldn't have been safe otherwise. I tried to–"

Seaton rubbed his face, and slowly exhaled.

"Well, it's all done with." He said with another fake smile, straightening his posture. "I suppose we should return to the Green System. I'll hide the Valeron again, you can show me around your own ship–it looked marvelous from the outside!–and I'll be sure to catch up on lots of family activities. It'll be a vacation, and I won't even do any work! It's gonna be all good–"

"Richard." Dorothy said in flat, jarring tone.

Richard fell silent.

Dorothy reached out and grasped his hand. With her other hand, she reached out and touched Richard's chin, and turned him to the right to meet her eyes.

And then she calmly ennuciated three words.

"Don't. You. Dare." She said.

Richard blinked several times. "Red–"

"Don't you dare. Not with me." Dorothy replied gently.

Two tears trickled down Richard Seaton's cheeks, and the metaphorical mask he had been wearing for the entire conversation finally dropped.

"I tried to fight back, Dottie." Seaton rasped, clenching Dorothy's hand in his own. "I really, really did. But when I tried–"

He bowed his head and did what men of his fiber and determination only do under the most unique and rare of circumstances.

He wept. Without restraint or control or conscious thought.

"Shhhhh." Dorothy said quietly, pulling him into a close embrace, clutching him like a wailing babe. "Shhhhh."

"I tried..." Seaton mumbled as he buried his face in Dorothy's shoulder. "I tried..."


	6. Chapter 6

In the Orion Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, on the planet of Normalon in the arrangement of emerald suns and planets known as the Green System, within one of the gleaming spires of the proudest city of that ancient and revered race of scientists, Dorothy Vanemen Seaton drew a weathered bow across the strings of her pristinely and delicately kept Stradivarius Violin coaxing forth proud, resonant notes of unmitigated depth and emotional intensity! Slowly, and deliberately, her deft and strong fingers flew across the next, her bow moving in smooth flowing notions, so that the pitch and timbre and tone of each string was expressed to it's fullest and most rich extremes!

Finally, she let the last note softly fade away and lifted her bow from the strings with a sigh of pure, utmost satisfaction!

"Oh Well done, Mrs. Seaton! Well done!" A matronly looking Normalonian lady dressed with loose, billowing robes said, clapping her hands together in admiration, a box hovering in the air next to her, suspended on a precisely balanced rod of pure force!

"The melody was–well, how to say– quite subtle, simple and yet filled with such emotional depth!"

Dorothy eyed the Noramlonian with a sideways glance, then chuffed a single, wry chuckle. "Telamon...I was tuning."

Telamon's smiled faded. "Oh. I...feel rather foolish now, and believe you me, that's not something I feel quite often! It's a rather counterproductive emotion, I must say..." She cocked her head to the side.

"Your 'Violin': you must tune it every time before playing: yes, I see how the taut strings slowly loose elasticity, the means of correction is quite simple and elegant...still, wouldn't it be more efficient, to use strings made from strong materials? I could create an alloy as supple and resonant to your fingers as pure titanium alloy: never weakening, never slackening. Or perhaps a simple computer mechanism and automatically turns the pegs, keeping it constantly in tune: or the composition of the wood...some fiberglass materials..."

"Telamon..." Dorothy said, holding up her hand, bow clasped between her thumb and palm, smiling gently. "That's quite alright! I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. This violin's a piece of art, and I...I think tuning it manually is truly a better way of doing things!"

"I think I understand!" Telamon replied. "It's some quaint Earth tradition: artisan manufacturing, the old ways and and that...oh dear, that sounded rather patronizing: Oh, dear me!"

Dorothy laughed. "I think I can forgive you, 'Teleey'! It's not tradition...or at least, not tradition for the sake of tradition. It's..."

She paused. "I've played violin ever since I was eight years or age. Every day, I've been tuning it, using tuning forks at first, and then later fixing the tones right in my head and in my blood. Because of that...I know this instrument: I know the music I can make on it, how far I can push it...think Muscle memory, intuition, that sort of thing."

Telamon frowned, and nodded. "I think I understand: of course, there's a subjectivity to your viewpoint..."

Dorothy cut Telamon off as gently as she could. "Is _it_in the box?" She asked, nodding to the suspended box floating next to the First of Chemistry.

"Oh! Yes it is!" Telamon blinked, then picked up the box from it's cradle of energies and offered it to Dorothy. "A simple matter of molecular replication: the base components were rather elemental..."

"I understand." Dorothy hastily said. She set her Stradivarius in it's case gingerly, then took the box from Telamon and opened it.

"...Looks good. Perfect, in fact." Dorothy closed the box and set it to the side.

Then she hugged the First of Chemistry.

"Thank you." She whispered. "This'll...help."

Telamon's green skin darkened at the cheeks, and as she returned the embrace.

"Uh...well, it was no trouble at all." Telamon gently extricated herself, and toyed with a lock of his dark emerald hair, staring off into the distance.

"Has he really not left the observatory after all this time?"

"No," Dorothy said with a sigh. "He leaves to eat meals at the dormitories: he goes to one seminar at day, mostly cosmology related. He does some lab work during the Time of Work, and participates in one athletic activity during the Time of Relaxation. And then he goes back to the observatory, until the next day."

"Oh!" Telamon said, brightening a little. "Well, that's good, isn't it?"

"No." Dorothy said, picking up both cases and shaking her head softly. "No, it isn't"

%%%

Dorothy leapt up the inertia chute, wind rustling through her hair as beams of force levitated her up through the many floors of the observatory tower. She lightly stepped off at the top floor and approached the double doors to the Deep Space Probing room.

_How do I want to do this?_ Dorothy thought, as she stopped outside the door. _How do I make my entrance in such a way as to rouse my depressed, discouraged other half?_

Dorothy Seaton pursed her lips in thought.

_Well,_ She thought. _What would Richard do in this situation?_

%%%

Richard Seaton, dolorously staring into the visiplate of the Normalonian Grand Deep-Space 5th Order Prober at a distant Nebula, was abrubtly jostled from his melancholy ruminations, when the door to the Observatory room was abruptly blown off his hinges by a Ray Gun Blast of Luminous, Ravening Destruction!

And through the smoke and fire, as Richard whipped out his Colt Automatic in anticipation of combat, strode his wife, Dorothy Vaneman Seaton, carrying her violin case in one hand, and brandishing a Infra-Ray blaster in the other, hair tousled and wildly strewn from the concussion of the energy beam!

Behind her, suspended on a delicate needle of force, floating wherever she roamed, was the mysterious box containing the object she had commissioned under mysterious circumstances!

With careless regard, Dorothy Seaton tossed the instrument of destruction to the side with a flick of her hand.

"Hello dear," She said dotingly with a smile. "How was your day at work?"

Richard lowered his guns back into their well-worn holsters, though he could banish his queer eyed expression quite so easily.

"Dorothy...what in blazes! I thought you were a vengeful Fenachrome or Skrull or Sontarran looking for payback...and the door! What about knocingk! It is in fact possible to knock on doors, as opposed to...you scared the living daylights out of me!"

Dorothy leaned her head to the side, and nodded. "There we are then: a passionate response, at last!"

Richard ran a hand through his air impulsively. "What...Dorothy, I'm fine. I've...dealt with it. I'm not being reclusive anymore."

Dorothy sighed. "No, now you're acting like an automated piece of machinery: for heaven's sake you're obeying schedules, of all things!"

She shrugged.

"I figured you needed something to knock you out of your planetary orbit of morose rumination, dear. I'm sorry if I startled you unduly."

Suddenly, she snapped her fingers and began walking forward.

"But you still need a bit of help, ****: and I think I know something that'll help."

With a well manicured and strong hand, Dorothy reached out and grasped Richard by the wrist.

"Dottie." Richard protested as his wife dragged him to the descending chute. "I'll feel better in time: please don't trouble yourself on my account...you've borne too much already..."

"That's all noble and self-sacrificing, Richard." Dorothy said, rolling her eyes and still dragging her husband along with her into the inertial chute, the mysterious box still floating along with her. "But this isn't about feeling better. Not really anyway.

They stepped off into a conservatory area, a greenhouse style affair with fat-leaved, purple stemed Normalon vegetation, a small running indoor fountain whose water looped back and forth in fractal patterns, and a series of stone brick pathways leading to a small, well-lit platform.

There were two armless chairs. And in front of each chair was a simple metal music stand, with two thin books placed on each.

Seaton stopped in his tracks. "Oh?"

Dorothy reached over and flipped open the gently floating box. Nestled snuggly inside it, on top of a bed of a velvet-like substance, lay a complete molecular replica of Dorothy Vaneman Seaton's one-of-a-kind Stradivarius Violin, small in every way, even down to a few nicks and scratches.

"Dorothy?" Seaton said.

"It's yours." Dorothy said quietly, setting her case on the ground, picking up the violin from it's box with two hands, and offering it gingerly to her husband.

Richard hesitated, then reached out with one hand–

Dorothy gave him a cross-eyed look.

–Richard reached out with both hands and took it with both hands, cradling the Violin to his chest as awkwardly as he had with his newborn son.

"I thought I'd teach you how to play a bit." Dorothy said. "It's challenging, ever so rewarding..."

She smiled as a thought occurred.

"And it'll be just like Sherlock Holmes: all the great geniuses had a thing for music, right?"

"Dorothy..." Richard said with a heavy sigh. "At another time, this would be interesting, but..." He shook his head. "I don't think I'm in the mood for it."

Dorothy arched a thin, curving eyebrow. "Mood?" She asked dryly. "Music isn't like romantic wooing or a friendly barroom brawl: Music's too powerful a thing to be restricted for when you're in a _Good Mood_, ****."

She picked up her own case and took out her own violin. She set bow to string and began played a soft, slow tune of a few notes, pitched low enough that her voice could carry.

"You know so much about the nature of the universe and science, dear, but I know music. If the universe was a fire, it'd be the smoke. It surrounds and binds us and..."

She lowered her violin for a bit, pausing. "And the funny thing about it, is, everything is fodder for it. The happiest moment of your entire life..."

Her bow flew across the strings as she coaxed for a folksy tune of bright staccato notes.

"The most exciting..."

She increased the speed of her strokes, switching the tune to a swift bluegrass style song.

"Anger..."

Her bow scraped across the string, loud brassy notes vibrating forth as she played some bars from a song of Paganini.

"Sorrow..."

She slowed down, drawing out the notes into long, melancholy sounds of lament.

"It's all relevant. You can take the events of your life, all it's height and depths, and pour it all into your music."

She lowered her violin, gazing into Seaton's eyes.

"And it doesn't make your sadness go away. But if you pour your sorrow into your music, and coax beauty out of your suffering..."

Her eyes twinkled suddenly, and she held both her bow and violin in one hand as she rested her other on Richard's shoulder. Richard lifted one of his hands from where he held his new violin, and clasped it over his wife's.

"Well, then your sadness isn't so bad anymore, is it! It has worth, it has meaning, because it's been used to create something great and wonderful. And if you can use the lowest moments of your existence to create something good and beautiful...well, then that means it's all worthwhile, doesn't it? Life is worthwhile, always and ever."

She held eye contact with her husband, then averted her gaze and chuckled.

"Or at least...that's my cunning plan. So come on then. Fingering first, then learning how to draw the bow properly."

She beckoned. "Come on."

Richard hesistated. Then he let out a breath.

"All right." He started forward. "I should warn you I'm going to be really bad at this."

"This was anticipated." Dorothy replied as she sat down in front of one of the music stands. "Now then, posture and fingering: imagine there's a ball under your right hand, a ball of air..."

The business of tuning and posturing and techniques of fingering quickly flowered, and Richard Seaton grasped them handily enough in the end. Finally, Richard lifted up the new bow and new violin, copied from the design of a long dead renowned earth craftsman, and set it to the freshly tuned strings.

The first note was very soft, almost too soft to be heard properly.

_In the depths of space, a whirling fleet of cylindrical craft maneuvered into battle formation, their cold steel hulls numbering in the hundreds of thousands, some large, some small, but all alike.  
><em>_  
>Within the cold, gunmetal grey halls, metal men marched to and fro like ants in a hive, pistons clanking, faces of steel expressionless, all of them uniform and emotionless as the grey. In the fleet control room, their designated leader stood over a tactical display. One of the subordinates spoke in a buzzing electronic voice.<em>

"

_**Cyber Controller, unknown vessels approaching from subspace.**__"_

The Cyber Controller turned. "

_**Display. Ascertain whether it is the enemy.**__"_

Far off from the Cyber Fleet, a flotilla of Cubes and Spheres appeared, uniform in shape and bereft of hull-plating.

A message was dispatched from each of the ships.

"

_**We Are the Borg. Resistance is Futile. Lower Your Shields and Surrender Your Ship.**__"_

A reply was dispatched.

"

_**Your Order is Rejected. We are the next stage in bipedal evolution. We shall convert you to the superior Cyber-Paradigm. You will be like us.**__"_

"

_**Incorrect. You shall be assimilated. Your paradigm shall be incorporated int our own.**__"_

"

_**Incorrect. We shall enforce unity and uniformity. All who do not cooperate with upgrading shall be del–.**__"_

And then from several parsecs away, a single plunger was depressed.

And each and every Cyber Warship and Borg Cube were pierced through and through ravening particle beams of unfathomable intensity.

The very ether was flooded with jamming frequencies and electronic warfare blocks, overloading the sensory arrays of the various ships as they all crashed and burned as one.

No data was recovered, no adaptation possible. No survivors were left.

The hunt had begun. And as the civilized species of the galaxies fought their skirmishes with the Cybermen and the Borg, preparing their fleets in fear of an overwhelming invasion from the two...none of them knew of the many fleets that were being obliterated in the cold of space one by one, with no sign of who had caused it.

Richard tried again. This time it was louder, a shrill, warbling scraping sound. He winced.

__On one of the two inhabitable planets in a rimward starsystem whose sun blazed a bright blue, there were a race of sentient telepathic birds of Paradise that called themselves the Riim.__

__And in the 20th Epoch of their peaceful, stable civilization, it was all falling to pieces.__

__Thirty percent of their youth were rioting, causing chaos, and overturning the conventional social paradigms, some of them even regressing to a bizzare form of ancestor worship. Buildings and some of the oldest arboreal habitats had been destroyed with home built explosives. On the danger-filled streets and branches, there were sightings of Otherly creatures, beasts not of either world.__

__But that wasn't the the worst of it. For among the affected, irrational youth, there was a core of them whose mind-gesalts were calling out as one, with one terrible will, sending forth a psychic beacon into the void far beyond the Oort Cloud of the system.__

__Probes had been dispatched under Inertialess acceleration, to see if there was something out there...__

__And in the brief moments before their destruction, they send back images of large ovoid things, sailing between the void in the multitudes, with crawling, writhing masses of monsters...all filled with hunger and hate.__

__And in the highest Great-Nest of the prime planet, the Great Elders of the Riim gathered, their plumages wilted and their beaks dull, transmitting a horde of contradictory telepathic gesalts, of Comfort, Fear, Plans and Counterplans, of Anger, Determination and Despair.__

__And then a large pink hairless monkey standing on two legs materialized in their midst.__

__He wore concealing clothes that called to the minds of the Riim coverings meant for harsh weather...or protection in battle. And he held a golden sphere in his two hands, covered with blinking lights in red, blue, and green colors, flashing back and forth.__

__And then, to the Surprise of all the Riim Elders, he–a monkey, at that–broadcast a telepathic Gesalt to each of the the bird people.__

__[**Danger.**] He broadcast. [**Darkness. Hunger. Devouring of Worlds. Foe-Enemy. Beckoned Hence**__

__**Tyranids.**]__

__**Stranger Monkey.** The Riim Elders replied with varying levels of caution, distrust, and fear. **Bad Messenger. Unknown. Danger to the Riim? No bond, no trust.**__

__[**Reason. Urging. No Harm. Kin-Comrades. Think. Breath. Feel. Love. Progenate. Learn. Bond. Kin-Comrades. Mind.**__

__**Foe-Tyranids. Unopposed. Death of the Belly. Fight. Resist. Ward Off. Sacrifice. Indeterminate Victory. An Offering of Assistance. Knowledge. Weapons. Technology.**__

__**Hope.**__

__**No Trust Precedent. Reason Entreaty. Trust-Request Entreaty. Faith Entreaty.**__

__**Choice-Friendship?**]__

__For a moment, the waves of the Ether quieted as the Riim Elders confered amongst themselves, transmitting little packets of gesalts amongst themselves. Then as one, their head feathers twitched.__

__**Choice-Friendship. Thinking Monkey Kin-Comrade. Mind.**__

__Richard Seaton placed his prototype amplifier and inducer in his satchel, then rubbed his hands together with a bit of cheer.__

__"Right then." He cheerfully said to himself. "First things first: let's upgrade your sun..."  
><em>  
><em>

Seaton tried a third time, drawing the bow close: the sound was a little shrill, but smooth. This time, he felt he was starting to get it.

_A Projection of Seaton materialized within the secrets halls of the Knights of the Dark Tower, and he coughed politely as Taylor and Hellboy and the Wandering Puritan looked up from their deliberations on possible fractures in the temporal lock barring the Time War from the rest of Creation._

Seaton nodded. "I'm in."

He summoned a series of holographic images. "I have some concerns I want to put forth, and some proposals for a secret redoubt that I think you'll find interesting..."


End file.
